Big Blonde

Dorothy Parker

Description

Short story, winner of the 1929 O. Henry Award. The big blonde in question is Hazel Morse, who, when we meet her, is "a model in a wholesale dress establishment", whose thoughts are largely devoted to men. Then she meets Herbie Morse, an attractive man and a heavy drinker. Where will events now take her?

Sujets

• Romance historique
• 20th Century
• Historical
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 08 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774643600
• Langue: English

Extrait

Big Blonde
by Dorothy Parker

First published in 1929
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
BIG BLONDE

by
Dorothy Parker



















I
Hazel Morse was a large, fairwoman of the type that incites somemen when they use the word "blonde" toclick their tongues and wag their headsroguishly. She prided herself upon hersmall feet and suffered for her vanity,boxing them in snub-toed, high-heeled slippersof the shortest bearable size. The curiousthings about her were her hands, strangeterminations to the flabby, white armssplattered with pale tan spots—long, quiveringhands with deep and convex nails. Sheshould not have disfigured them with littlejewels.
She was not a woman given to recollections.At her middle thirties, her old dayswere a blurred and flickering sequence, animperfect film, dealing with the actions ofstrangers.
In her twenties, after the deferred deathof a hazy widowed mother, she had beenemployed as a model in a wholesale dressestablishment—it was still the day of the bigwoman, and she was then prettily coloredand erect and high-breasted. Her job wasnot onerous, and she met numbers of menand spent numbers of evenings with them,laughing at their jokes and telling them sheloved their neckties. Men liked her, andshe took it for granted that the liking ofmany men was a desirable thing. Popularityseemed to her to be worth all the work thathad to be put into its achievement. Menliked you because you were fun, and whenthey liked you they took you out, and thereyou were. So, and successfully, she wasfun. She was a good sport. Men like agood sport.
No other form of diversion, simpler ormore complicated, drew her attention. Shenever pondered if she might not be betteroccupied doing something else. Her ideas,or, better, her acceptances, ran right alongwith those of the other substantially builtblondes in whom she found her friends.
When she had been working in the dressestablishment some years she met HerbieMorse. He was thin, quick, attractive, withshifting lines about his shiny, brown eyesand a habit of fiercely biting at the skinaround his finger nails. He drank largely;she found that entertaining. Her habitualgreeting to him was an allusion to his stateof the previous night.
"Oh, what a peach you had," she usedto say, through her easy laugh. "I thoughtI'd die, the way you kept asking the waiterto dance with you."
She liked him immediately upon theirmeeting. She was enormously amused athis fast, slurred sentences, his interpolationsof apt phrases from vaudeville acts andcomic strips; she thrilled at the feel of hislean arm tucked firm beneath the sleeve ofher coat; she wanted to touch the wet, flatsurface of his hair. He was as promptlydrawn to her. They were married six weeksafter they had met.
She was delighted at the idea of being abride; coquetted with it, played upon it.Other offers of marriage she had had, andnot a few of them, but it happened that theywere all from stout, serious men who hadvisited the dress establishment as buyers;men from Des Moines and Houston andChicago and, in her phrase, even funnierplaces. There was always something immenselycomic to her in the thought of livingelsewhere than New York. She could notregard as serious proposals that she sharea western residence.
She wanted to be married. She was nearingthirty now, and she did hot take the yearswell. She spread and softened, and herdarkening hair turned her to inexpertdabblings with peroxide. There were timeswhen she had little flashes of fear about herjob. And she had had a couple of thousandevenings of being a good sport among hermale acquaintances. She had come to bemore conscientious than spontaneous about it.
Herbie earned enough, and they took alittle apartment far uptown. There was aMission-furnished dining room with ahanging central light globed in liver-coloredglass; in the living-room were an "overstuffedsuite", a Boston fern and a reproductionof the Henner Magdalene with the redhair and the blue draperies; the bedroom wasin gray enamel and old rose, with Herbie'sphotograph on Hazel's dressing table andHazel's likeness on Herbie's chest of drawers.
She cooked—and she was a good cook—andmarketed and chatted with the deliveryboys and the colored laundress. She lovedthe flat, she loved her life, she loved Herbie.In the first months of their marriage, shegave him all the passion she was ever toknow.
She had not realized how tired she was.It was a delight, a new game, a holiday, togive up being a good sport. If her headached or her arches throbbed, she complainedpiteously, babyishly. If her mood was quiet,she did not talk. If tears came to her eyes,she let them fall.
She fell readily into the habit of tearsduring the first year of her marriage. Evenin her good sport days, she had been knownto weep lavishly and disinterestedly onoccasion. Her behavior at the theatre was astanding joke. She could weep at anythingin a play—tiny garments, love bothunrequited and mutual, seduction, purity,faithful servitors, wedlock, the triangle.
"There goes Haze," her friends would say,watching her. "She's off again."
Wedded and relaxed, she poured her tearsfreely. To her who had laughed so muchcrying was delicious. All sorrows becameher sorrows; she was Tenderness. Shewould cry long and softly over newspaperaccounts of kidnapped babies, deserted wives,unemployed men, strayed cats, heroic dogs.Even when the paper was no longer beforeher, her mind revolved upon these things andthe drops slipped rhythmically over herplump cheeks.
"Honestly," she would say to Herbie, "allthe sadness there is in the world when youstop to think about it!"
"Yeah," Herbie would say.
She missed nobody. The old crowd, thepeople who had brought her and Herbietogether, dropped from their lives, lingeringlyat first.